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Sentry Mode
- Thread starter Chanceofthat
- Start date
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- Tags
- Model 3 Model S Model X Tesla Inc.
chronopc
Active Member
People are reporting about 1 mile per hour which is definitely something I can live with.
So today at work around 0800-0801 sentry mode and the car alarm were activated.
The footage shows someone walking close by on the right side. They are close but never touched the car as far as I can see. The only I can think of is as it split between the recordings that it missed him peaking in.
The other option that happened just a few seconds after is a giant dump truck went by on the right side and was also close.
Any chance either of these set it off? I don't notice any damage and did not see anything on any of the other recordings or cameras. No one was there when I got to the car a few minutes after it went off.
Does sentry mode/alarm turn off automatically when the threat goes away or was it as soon as it detects my Bluetooth?
Thank you!
The footage shows someone walking close by on the right side. They are close but never touched the car as far as I can see. The only I can think of is as it split between the recordings that it missed him peaking in.
The other option that happened just a few seconds after is a giant dump truck went by on the right side and was also close.
Any chance either of these set it off? I don't notice any damage and did not see anything on any of the other recordings or cameras. No one was there when I got to the car a few minutes after it went off.
Does sentry mode/alarm turn off automatically when the threat goes away or was it as soon as it detects my Bluetooth?
Thank you!
That’s about what I’ve been seeing, maybe a max of 1.5 miles of range lost per hour if Sentry Mode is particularly active (lots of movement around the car). Once warmer temperatures return and with it increased battery efficiency I doubt I’ll even notice the small range hit at all.
Not sure about the person being close to but not touching your car but a big truck passing by very close may be able to vibrate your car enough to set off the alarm.
As for when the alarm itself turns off I’m not sure. I haven’t had it go off once since I got the Sentry Mode update about 10 days ago. I would assume the alarm would silence itself eventually while keeping Sentry Mode engaged and ready to go to alarm state again if necessary. Sentry Mode does turn off automatically when you open the door. If the car is locked and Sentry Mode is on it doesn’t matter if your phone is within bluetooth range, it won’t turn off until you unlock the car by opening the door or you turn it off from the app.
barjohn
Member
Those of you that have used a Raspberrypie as a USB device will find that after the Sentry Mode update, the dash cam feature will no longer detect the device as a USB drive, which is a real pain as with it, it automatically uploaded the files to my home computer when the car was in my garage and it connected to the Raspberrypie via WiFi. It does detect a drive but shows an x and I haven't found a way to get rid of it and get it to record.
israndy
Supercharger Hunter
If and when I get the Sentry update I hope I don't have that issue with my SanDisk Connect
-Randy
I only get 10 minutes of video. My 64 GB stick shows it still has 64GB free with those 10 minutes of video recorded so it's not recycling the videos due to lack of space. Wonder what I am doing wrong.
-Randy
FloridaJohn
Member
If you don't have Sentry Mode, then I think everything is working correctly. TeslaCam only records a rolling 10 minutes of video (i.e. oldest video file gets written over). If you want to save an incident, you touch the icon and it copies the last 10 minutes of video to a new folder.
If you read the manual you will see that the X means the drive is full and can't record any more. Delete files and see it that gets you back recording. If you have corruption, you should reformat using FAT32. Hope you are pausing TeslaCam as indicated in the manual before disengaging your drive or you will have some corruption likely.
I've been seeing corruption (recorded partial green screen) on a number of my video clips and almost always from my left repeater camera. Have to discuss with Tesla as it might indicate I have problem with that camera recording consistently. Hard to say if that camera has issues picking up traffic to my left while driving as I really haven't made a point of checking to see if cars have always appeared and not sure if that camera would be involved. If it turns out to be a camera issue, Sentry Mode will have been helpful picking this up and ultimately making my car safer once addressed.
TeslaCam will buffer 1 hour when recording and write over it. Any "saved" files on TeslaCam will be saved and not written over and those saved TeslaCam files will be 10 minutes. Without Sentry Mode installed or active, the files will be only from the front facing camera. Once you get the update with Sentry Mode however, TeslaCam will then have 2 extra cameras added to it so that will increase your file size of the 1-hour buffer space.
If you have the Sentry Mode update (few do at this point, still in early beta) and have it activated, it will save a folder with 10 minutes of 1-min. video clips from 3 cameras--front and left and right side. Each 1-min. individual camera clip is apx. 30MB so 90MB total generally per minute for all 3 cameras, thus apx. 900MB for each SM saved folder. As these files get generated automatically in SM when it detects even people or cars near your vehicle, the file space will add up quickly and fill your drive if you have a small capacity device. Looking through my saved clips, many times I don't see anyone near my car just other vehicles passing by. Today when I was looking over clips for the first time I saw a mother and her kids getting into the vehicle next to our car last night while out to dinner. First time seeing a person. I've never had an Alarm generated.
BTW to avoid saving a SM file when I am going out to the car (it would detect me approaching), I am making it a habit to turn off Sentry Mode from my app before heading to the car.
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barjohn
Member
I completely rebuilt my Pi-cam and the drive is freshly formatted FAT32. There are no files on it when I plugged it in. It worked perfectly before the update. I have two, one I kept as a backup and the result was the same with both. One is 64GB and the other is 128GB.
Peeking in would not set off the alarm. I had my coworkers, my son, and myself peek into my car to trigger recordings for fun and my alarm was never set off. But then again, since I had Sentry Mode, I have never tested the alarm so maybe mine was not working at all LOL. I think the alarm could be sound activated? What if the car next to yours slam their trunk or door really loud? Or if a car nearby had a loud backfire?
Not sure about the alarm, but Sentry Mode does not turn off even if it detects your Bluetooth. If you had it activated, you coming back to the car will trigger an event and recording. It doesn't even turn off if you open the door and sit inside... you have to put the car to Drive or Reverse and it will turn off.
The other day I had SM on overnight and got in my car to leave. No problem gaining access to the car through my phone key. Forgot to turn off Sentry Mode which works when the car is in Park, and after putting the car in Reverse and starting to back out, I heard a warning signal and the display showed a red line behind my trunk with the words STOP which I did. Had forgotten about SM and was pretty sure there wasn't an obstruction behind my car (would have noticed walking up to it to get in) but put car in Park and got out to check. Nothing. Was able to back out afterwards. As I was driving, I remembered Sentry Mode had been on and figured the STOP alert was to give the car time to disable SM. So lesson learned to disable SM before driving.
FloridaJohn
Member
I've never had to manually deactivate Sentry Mode after getting back into my car. It has always turned itself off after opening the doors.
Yes I've seen some weird video artifacts when reviewing the video from the side cameras. The front camera never seems to be affected though. Hopefully this is better in 2019.5.15.
BOBEDIGITL
Member
I may be wrong but I believe you have to turn it on every time you want to use it. I never turn it on as I don't like the vampire drain I was getting. On the touchscreen when you go to activate it, there's a little "I" next to the option which brings up a detail description which says you have to activate it before each use.
Yes, you do have to set it to be on every time otherwise the car will revert to the regular Alarm mode (requires the door to be open to set off). Because Sentry Mode can rack up some decent amount of file storage when it auto saves, having to physically set it everytime prevents you from saving unwanted files unless you want it to do so. I think it's a smart decision but obviously not as convenience. In comparison a Blackvue dashcam hardwired into our Model S will basically record 24/7 including during parking which is what we wanted (have a 256GB micro SD card in there); and it only saves files when it senses an impact. When you park the car it will sense the car not moving and "tag" those files parking but will not "save" them. Everything not saved will get written over. So the operation is different and so are the features and price of the dashcam. There's an app to view files over wifi or sending footage to the cloud and you can set sensitivity levels for side to side and up down movement of the car. For what we have in TeslaCam and Sentry Mode, I think this is pretty good. Not perfect but a good start.
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